Did you know Sensei has sixty videos on our YouTube Channel? Our videos are short and comprehensive and they cover a wide range of topics from “Can tablets replace laptops?” to “How do I encrypt my e-mail?”

Last month “The Ransomware Epidemic and How to Protect Your Law Firm” by Sensei’s Sharon Nelson and John Simek was featured in the NOVA ALA’s June White Papers.

The Association of Legal Administrators (ALA), the premier management resource for the legal profession, is the largest association representing legal administrators around the world. ALA’s mission is to “promote and enhance the competence and professionalism of legal administrators and all members of the management team.”

Excerpt: Remember the good old days of ransomware? You would get an e-mail saying that you owed the IRS money and could pay it via a helpfully included link. Lots of people did this because it was only a couple of hundred dollars. And who wants to duke it out with the IRS? The same dull-witted people fell for the e-mail claiming that someone at your home had downloaded music or movies illegally (much more likely true than the first scenario) and you needed to pay a fine so no one would come after you (or your spouse/child) for a much greater sum. Again, the price was relatively small and many people paid.

The likelihood that a lawyer would fall for these primitive versions of ransomware was small. Fast forward to the days of Cryptolocker which began in 2013. This ransomware Trojan attacked computers running Microsoft Windows, propagating itself by getting a user to click on an attachment or a link contained in an e-mail. Click on the link or attachment and “Winner, Winner, Chicken Dinner” the malware invisibly downloaded and began to encrypt your files. The malware encrypted files stored locally on the computer system as well as on any mapped network drives, such as those files on your server, connected flash drives and other external USB drives.

If you look at the “Hot Buttons” column in the July/August 2017 issue of the ABA’s Law Practice Magazine, you will find the article “Running with the Machines: AI in the Practice of Law” written by Sensei’s Sharon Nelson and John Simek. The Law Practice Magazine is a bi-monthly publication of the American Bar Association’s Law Practice Division.

Excerpt: Back in 2015, in this column, we wrote a piece titled “How Will Watson’s Children Impact the Future of Law Practice?” What a lot has happened in two years! The children of Watson and other artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continue to spawn at an ever-accelerating rate.

Only recently has genuine real world usage of AI in law firms begun to flourish. Amid the initial hype, about 95 percent of what was ballyhooed as AI, in our judgement, was not. Even today there is an astonishing amount of hype – everyone wants to say they’ve boarded the AI train. As we write, an article from InfoWorld was just published titled “Artificially Inflated: It’s Time to Call BS on AI.” While great clickbait, we think the title overstates the case. The peaks and troughs of AI are well documented and, as we are now at a peak, the hype factor gets greater, while the reality (often very good) is lost in the noise of the hype.

In this episode of Digital Detectives, hosts Sharon Nelson and John Simek speak with Denver Edwards about cybersecurity. In their discussion, they address the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) cybersecurity framework and how it relates to the FTC’s work. They also talk about how a company can use the NIST framework along with FTC guidance in order to minimize security risks. They conclude the episode with predictions regarding how the Trump Administration will handle cybersecurity.

The July/August 2017 issue of SC Magazine was dedicated to Women in IT Security. Our very own Sharon Nelson was listed under “Women to Watch” on page 19, and of course, we have to agree!

Excerpt: Welcome to SC Media’s fourth annual Women in IT Security issue. We’re taking a look at advances and obstacles while celebrating some of the most noteworthy achievers.

We’re highlighting some of the industry’s brightest leaders – our Power Players, Influencers and Women to Watch – as well as a number of other contributors.

We’re also presenting feature stories delving deep into various aspects of what it means to be female in an industry that skews male. Our hope is that the insights we advance here can contribute to improvements and foster further discussions.

Excerpt: Not always. There was a recent case in which confidential data was not, to put it mildly, well handled. The corporate defendant, a mortgage servicer, was accused of violating a consumer’s privacy rights based on the manner in which it handled collection calls. The defendant protected its customer data with layers of network security consistent with best practices and ISO guidelines. During discovery, the plaintiff’s experts received the calling data and copies of the customer service call recordings.

Both experts had unrelated full-time day jobs. Their expert witness work was a side business run out of their homes. Neither expert had a technical degree, and neither had taken a course in data security for over a decade. Both experts stored the sensitive case data in their homes. There were no locks on the doors to their home offices, so anyone in the houses had access to the drives. Neither expert was familiar with the basic ISO standards relating to data security. Neither had a written data security plan for their home network, and no outside company had ever performed vulnerability or penetration testing on their networks. One expert had no automatic intrusion detection software on his network. Both routinely produced data with sensitive PII (personally identifiable information) in unencrypted form.

Sensei’s Sharon Nelson and John Simek were recently featured in “Legal Technology Spending: Biggest Money-Wasters” by Joan Feldman with Attorney at Work.

Excerpt: The internet is really helpful at listing common ways people waste their money. But legal technology spending is a bit trickier to control than your gym fees or cable bill. Even when it’s just you and your laptop. So, where are law firms losing money? Today, legal technology experts Heidi Alexander, Sharon Nelson and John Simek, Catherine Reach, Nora Regis, Deborah Savadra and Courtney Troutman point to the biggest money-wasters in law offices — and share their tips for spending wisely.